THE COMING CANALS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 11999, 23 June 1902, Page 4

THE COMING CANALS.

While Mr. Bollard was thrilling the hearts of his Avondale constituents by the courageous prophecy that within five years vessels would sail up the Whau to Onehunga, the American Senate was subscribing its approval to the Panama Canal scheme which, will have an effect upon the Pacific far greater than the Suez Canal had upon the Mediterranean or the Indian Ocean. The Suez Canal has doubtless strengthened the hold of Europe upon Asia and diverted trade back to Mediterranean cities, but the Panama Canal will bring not merely Europe into direct touch with the East by another route, but consolidates the naval strength of the United States and makes it effective on either coast. During the Spanish War a disaster to Dewey's fleet would have been a most serious blow to America, as the success of Dewey was a crowning victory. But with the canal once built, there is quick water as well as direct land communication between San Francisco and New Orleans and New York. It will be no longer possible for the United States to be overwhelmed in the Pacific while triumphant on the Atlantic. This military advantage has been a powerful inducement to the Washington Government to take up a project with which private enterprise had shown itself unable to cope. That this advantage should accrue to our AngloSaxon kinsmen we must regard with approval, since anything which strengthens one Anglo-Saxon nation in the Pacific strengthens both. But the commercial advantage will largely come to New Zealand, which the canal will make one of the central positions in the world. When we see regular liners at Auckland wharf departing north-eastward for New York or London or Marseilles, via Panama and New Orleans, we shall learn the uses of canals and turn our attention to the construction of our own.